Skinner praises Bedlington players after ‘deserved victory’

Muted celebrations by former Collier Lee Scott after giving Bedlington a first half lead. Picture by Ian Appleby - www.ianapplebyimages.com

Brian Bennett

Published:01:25Tuesday 26 August 2014

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Bedlington manager Ian Skinner was full of praise for his side and thought they were full value for their 3-1 derby success over Ashington at Woodhorn Lane on Monday.

Goals from Lee Scott (2) and Jordan Nellis with a reply from home skipper Andrew Johnson set up the win.

The Welfare Park boss said: “Naturally I’m delighted with the victory and if I’m honest, we deserved it.

“Full credit to the lads, they have done everything we have asked of them.

“We set up a way of playing that we thought would cause Ashington lots of problems and it did.

“We forced them to go long on several occasions in the first half and we managed to get Conor Winter in as a ‘false’ forward, where he started as a forward then dropped into the space in front of the back four, and we got a little bit of joy down the sides.”

There were two faces of Skinner either side of the interval – the first happy as his side hit the home outfit with a goal in the 45th minute, but then angry with the way they kicked off the second period.

“I was contemplating my half-time team talk and was relatively pleased yet disappointed that we hadn’t taken one of our chances – then we took the lead at a great time,” he said.

“But we started the second half terribly and it was a poor goal to concede from a corner.

“However, from there we stuck to our principles and got a bit fortunate with Richard Flynn’s mistake which led to our second – but it was probably nice that the ball fell to Lee Scott because he is a good finisher.

“Our confidence seemed to come back then we capitalised on another mistake to make it 3-1 and everyone who was here would see that we went on to create up to six chances before the end and possibly, and I’m not being greedy, our tally could have been more.”

Skinner revealed that he had let some of his squad do the pre-match talking.

“I’m over the moon for the players because it was all about them today,” he added.

“We have a lot of lads in the dressing room who are from the local area and they understood what a derby was like.

“A lot were here last year when we won 1-0, so before the game they did the talk about what it felt to get three points here.

“They carried that out, the rest bought into it, and it made my job easy.”